Interconnections for electronic systems continue to provide increased bandwidth and improved functionality to serve the computing demands of highly integrated computing devices. For example, devices including set-top boxes, mobile phones, and tablet computers now employ high bandwidth interconnect to access high resolution audio and video content. Many of these interconnect technologies support multiple legacy data rates along with high speed modes operating at data rates of 6 Gigabits per second (Gbps) and higher. The quality of data transmission at these rates often degrades due to transmission channel loss caused by the material and geometry of the transmission line.
To compensate for signal degradation due to channel loss, many interconnect technologies use loss compensation devices along the transmission channel. Loss compensation devices operate at the physical layer to improve data transfer rate by modifying certain aspects of the physical layer signal or regenerating the physical layer signal to improve signal quality. For interconnect technologies that employ both physical layer and link layer functionality, many loss compensation devices also include functionality to handle data path management, power state management, and other link layer functionality. The processing of link layer signals adds additional complexity and increases power consumption for loss compensation architectures that employ such features. Loss compensation techniques employing simpler architectures, however, lack the ability to determine system status. Unaware of the system status, these simpler interconnect systems may limit the ability of the loss compensation circuit to accurately replicate the signal characteristics of the source device.